"I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" is a song written and performed by Scottish duo The Proclaimers, and first released as the lead single from their 1988 album Sunshine on Leith. Although it failed to reach the top ten in either the UK or Ireland on its initial release, it has since become their most popular song worldwide, reaching number 1 in both Australia and New Zealand in early 1989, and in 1993 the song reached the top five on both the US Billboard Hot 100 and Canadian Hot 100 charts following its appearance in the film Benny & Joon. In 2007 the Proclaimers re-recorded the song with English comedians Peter Kay and Matt Lucas for the Comic Relief charity, scoring a number one hit in the UK.

The song was mainly written by Craig Reid in mid-1987 while waiting to travel to a Proclaimers concert in Aberdeen. Reid recalled, "I can remember sitting at the piano and the chords just came to me. I reckon I wrote the whole thing in 45 minutes. I knew that it was a good song, maybe even a single, but I had no idea how popular it would become."[1]

In 2007 the Proclaimers re-recorded the song with Peter Kay and Matt Lucas as their characters Brian Potter from Phoenix Nights and Andy Pipkin from Little Britain respectively. There is a slight change in the title of the song, with the parentheses placed around "I'm Gonna Be" rather than "500 Miles". The lyrics also include a change, with the words "roll 500 miles" replacing "walk 500 miles", because the characters Brian Potter and Andy Pipkin are both in wheelchairs. "(I'm Gonna Be) 500 Miles" was released as a charity single for Comic Relief immediately following its performance on the Comic Relief 2007: The Big One television show on BBC1 on 16 March 2007.[15] It reached number 3 on the official UK Singles Chart on download sales alone, and one week later reached number 1, where it remained for three weeks. It sold 126,000 copies in its first week, making it the biggest selling number one of the year up to that point.[16] Its sales were double that of the "official" Comic Relief single by Girls Aloud vs. Sugababes, and their cover of Aerosmith's "Walk This Way". The song ended 2007 as the year's 8th biggest-selling single in the UK.[17]

At the end of the fourth series of the new Doctor Who, a video of the cast and crew of the show (as well as The Proclaimers themselves) singing and dancing along to the song was released, as a farewell to David Tennant, Russell T. Davies, and other key players in the show's development; hailing the shift into the Steven Moffat era of the show.

The song is also featured on the How I Met Your Mother episode "Arrivederci, Fiero", in which it is revealed that the character Marshall has had a cassette tape with the song on it stuck in his car for years. Commentary on the song's unlimited replay value follows. It remained a running gag for the rest of the series.

This song is also featured on the Grey's Anatomy episode in season 9 "Readiness is All" when Matthew proposes to April in a surprise flash-mob to this song.

The song is sung in the television series The Cafe by Ralf Little and cast to close out the final episode of season one, "Deal or No Deal".

The song is also sung in the 2014 Australian film 500 Miles by the lead actor Pete Valley to the lead actress Ebony Nave in a quite iconic scene that is set in a small country town pub.[24]

In 2011, the Daily Mail reported that that the song inspired a fan, Ling Hsueh, to tease her boyfriend, Liu Peiwen, she would marry him only if he walked 1000 miles for her, and that he, not realizing that she was joking, set out to walk from his home in Anyang, China, to her home in Guangzhou, 1000 miles away.[25]

In 2015, Budweiser's Superbowl ad features a cover version of this song by Sleeping at Last.